1. Field
The present disclosure is directed to a method and apparatus for service continuity on a mobile communication device. More particularly, the present disclosure is directed to service continuity on a mobile communication device in an evolved universal mobile telecommunication system terrestrial radio access system.
2. Introduction
Presently, wireless terminals, such as cellular phones, can receive multimedia broadcast multicast service sessions where multimedia data, such as video, is broadcast to multiple terminals. Unfortunately, a base station serving a wireless terminal may not know the wireless terminal is receiving a multimedia broadcast multicast service session when the base station pages the wireless terminal to put it into a voice call. For example, a wireless terminal can receive multimedia broadcast multicast services while it is in idle mode. However, any services received by the wireless terminal are unknown to the serving base station since the base station does not monitor services being received while the wireless terminal is in idle mode. This can cause discontinuity in the services provided to the wireless terminal. This also causes a problem for ensuring simultaneous reception of voice calls and multimedia broadcast multicast services.
As a further example, an evolved universal mobile telecommunication system terrestrial radio access system operates on a time-frequency domain resource based physical layer. The wireless terminal can receive a pre-configured resource pattern for dedicated services, or it may need to track a particular multicast subframe allocation pattern for a multimedia broadcast multicast service, even in idle mode. A multicast subframe allocation pattern is a pattern of sub-frames assigned to the service of interest to the wireless terminal. This pre-configured resource pattern either in the dedicated or multicast case defines the resources the wireless terminal needs to receive and decode. Unfortunately, the wireless terminal cannot receive multiple services simultaneously with continuity of both services.
Thus there is a need for a method and apparatus for service continuity on a mobile communication device.